i know something now i didn't before
by Talking to Angels
Summary: "Hey, what happened just now?" Makki shoots him a look, and after confirming that yes, Matsukawa was speaking to him, he replies, "I came in with an injured leg, and insisted that I could walk myself. Turns out, I couldn't, and fell right into a cart of medical supplies. And now I think my wrist's busted too."
There's a reason Matsukawa hates going to hospitals. First of all, some things you see there are just downright depressing. Second of all, the waiting always takes forever. One time, he'd gotten a second-degree burn trying to cook barbecue, and he waited 4 hours in the ER before finally deciding to buy some antibacterial ointment from the drugstore and apply it himself.

So yeah, Matsukawa really doesn't like going to hospitals, but unfortunately, because he has two gashes on his face at least 15 centimetres long, and more along his arms, he kind of has to get it checked out in case he needs stitches or something.

He's in the emergency room by himself, waiting to get seen by one of the doctors. He thinks his cuts are still bleeding, but he's not entirely sure because of the gauze Iwaizumi had applied before driving him to the hospital. His friend had left a while ago, having needed to head back to work because unlike Matsukawa, Iwaizumi hadn't fallen through the glass door and ended up in the emergency room.

Honestly, Matsukawa's quite bored, because there's really nothing much he can do while he waits for a doctor. Suddenly, he war flashes back to the time he'd waited for hours in the ER before deciding to go home and treat his burn himself. The hospital was always busy. Looks like he's going to be stuck here for a while.

Matsukawa isn't sure how long he sits there for, but it couldn't have been more than half an hour before he hears a commotion somewhere else in the room. It sounds like two men, both talking loudly.

"I told you, I can walk myself!" one man says, his voice sounding mildly irritated. "It's probably just a sprain, it's no big deal."

"There is no way that's a sprain, Makki," the second man replies in a smooth tone. "You can't even put weight on it, it's definitely broken."

"Since when were you qualified to assess injuries, Oikawa? I'm telling you, I don't need you to hold me up," the man who must be Makki mutters. Matsukawa can't see them from where he is, but they sound relatively close. He hears some shuffling, before a huge crash! sounds, and there's a scream from Oikawa and a vaguely irritated and distressed-sounding curse from Makki.

Matsukawa turns his head to try to catch sight of what happened but finds that he still can't see what's happening due to the curtain still obstructing his view. A couple of nurses run towards the scene, and a brief conversation takes place between the two men and the nurses before Matsukawa finally sees who he assumes to be this Makki person. Two nurses are supporting him on either side as he limps towards where Matsukawa is, and another man whom Matsukawa assumes is Oikawa follows behind.

The nurses help Makki into the bed next to the one Matsukawa's in, before telling him to wait there until a doctor can come see him. Matsukawa himself had been told the same thing, and given how busy the hospital was, it'll probably be a while before either he or this Makki in the bed next to his get seen to.

After the nurses leave, the Oikawa guy announces that he needs to leave to be on time for his job, and makes his exit. And that leaves Matsukawa alone with the Makki person, who's now cradling his right wrist in his left hand. Judging from the conversation, Matsukawa assumes that Makki's here for his leg, which appears to be injured. But since he hadn't seen what had happened that'd caused the big crash, Matsukawa asks:

"Hey, what happened just now?"

Makki shoots him a look, and after confirming that yes, Matsukawa was speaking to him, he replies, "I came in with an injured leg, and insisted that I could walk myself. Turns out, I couldn't, and fell right into a cart of medical supplies. And now I think my wrist's busted too."

Matsukawa stares, because wow, coming to the ER with an injury only to get another injury honestly sucks, and just says, "Well, then."

"Yeah," Makki says, turning back to face the front again. "Well, then."

A moment passes where neither of them says anything before Makki speaks again.

"Why're you here? I mean, I see your face is covered in bandages- and blood's showing through, by the way, those must be some pretty deep cuts, what happened?"

Matsukawa snorts because the way he got himself injured was beyond stupid, it could have totally been prevented if he'd just been less of an idiot. "I fell through a glass door and cut my face."

Makki looks at him again, this time, his eyes wide. "Shit, oh my god, that's awful."

Matsukawa lets out a dry laugh. "Yeah, tell me about it."

"How'd you fall?"

"I was having lunch with a friend, sitting with my back to a glass door. I was trying to see how far I could tip my chair back, and eventually tipped back far enough to crash through the glass." Matsukawa laughed again, remembering the expression on Iwaizumi's face when it had happened. He'd looked horrified, concerned, and ready to murder him for being so stupid all at the same time.

Makki laughed too, and Matsukawa thinks it's a nice laugh. It sounds cute, and it's probably the best thing he's heard all day. Matsukawa doesn't know if he should be concerned that he doesn't even find it embarrassing to be thinking that about an almost complete stranger.

Abruptly, Makki slaps a hand over his mouth before saying, "Ah, fuck, sorry. It's probably really rude to laugh at that, isn't it?"

Matsukawa feels a grin stretching over his lips, which kind of stretches one of his cuts and makes it sting. But he doesn't really care at this moment because suddenly he's really glad that Makki is here in the emergency room with him no matter how bad that sounds.

"Don't worry about it, I'd have totally laughed at you for coming to the hospital only to injure yourself some more. I mean, how many people does that happen to?" he throws back.

"Touché," Makki says, "I guess we're even then."

Belatedly, Matsukawa remembers that he hasn't introduced himself yet and that Makki was literally talking to a man whose name he doesn't even know in the emergency room. It kind of makes it worse that Matsukawa knew his name, but he didn't know Matsukawa's. So, he says, "I'm Matsukawa, by the way."

"I'm Hanamaki, nice to meet you, Matsukawa. I'm sure this isn't the best circumstance you've met somebody under, but I hope I'm not too disappointing." Makki, no, Hanamaki, Makki must be a nickname, says in a somewhat sarcastic tone.

Matsukawa laughs. "That makes it sound like we're about to do something completely different than sit in the ER and wait for a doctor, you know."

"That's too bad, I'm sure if you weren't bleeding from your face and I didn't have two dysfunctional limbs we could find much more interesting things to do with each other." Hanamaki raises his eyebrows suggestively.

Matsukawa snorts at this. Because here he is, sitting in the emergency room at a hospital with bandages covering his whole face after having fallen through a glass door, and is currently getting hit on by a stranger who'd fallen in the ER and gotten an injury because he'd been too stubborn to accept help. What a day.

"You can't even see my face, how can you be so sure that you won't be disappointed by me once I get these bandages taken off?" Matsukawa raises his own eyebrows in response.

"I'm offended, do you really think I'm that shallow?" Hanamaki says in a tone that doesn't sound offended at all.

"Don't worry, I can assure you the face under these bandages won't disappoint at all, even if you were. It's your lucky day, not all guys who end up in the ER are as good-looking as me, you know." Matsukawa throws him the best smile he can manage right now, what with the bandages restricting his facial muscles.

Hanamaki bursts out laughing at this, in fact, he laughs so hard that he accidentally hits his injured wrist on the bed and winces slightly at that. However, he recovers quickly and starts speaking again with a smile on his face.

"Well, Matsukawa, since you're so sure about it, I'll be looking forward to seeing your face without all those bandages in the near future. How does coffee sound, after we get out of here?"

"It sounds amazing, although I hope you don't plan on meeting me in your state. I don't know how you're planning on going when your ankle's probably broken, along with your wrist."

"Don't you worry your little head, I'll hobble along with my crutches, you'll never know the difference."

"Excuse me, whose head are you calling little? I'll have you know my brain is full of knowledge," Matsukawa replies.

"Yeah, that same brain also led you to experiment how far you could tip your chair back," Hanamaki retorts.

"Rude, is this how you talk to a guy you just asked out on a date?"

Hanamaki grins. "Considering you agreed to that date, you must quite like the way I talk to you."

Matsukawa rolls his eyes, but he can still feel himself grinning. In all honesty, he doesn't think Hanamaki is wrong about that. He really is enjoying their banter.

"How will you use your crutches if your wrist is busted, though?" Matsukawa goes back to the other thing Hanamaki had mentioned.

Hanamaki's eyes widened. "Shit, you're right. I didn't think about that."

"Glad to see you're a forward thinker," Matsukawa replies.

"Shut up, I just forgot about it." Hanamaki feels around his injured wrist. "At least, I don't think it's broken? It could be just a sprain."

"Isn't that what you also said about your leg? And look where that got you," Matsukawa says drily.

"Hey now, watch it." Hanamaki's eyes flashed playfully. "You know, I am actually an arm wrestling champion. Once I'm all healed, you can't blame me if I come after you."

Matsukawa laughs at that. "Oh, please spare me, I'm terrified."

Hanamaki joins in his laughter. Before long, they start getting weird looks from people, and Matsukawa remembers that right, this is an emergency room.

Hanamaki must come to that same conclusion, because the next thing he says is, "I'd almost forgotten we were in the ER and waiting for a doctor. That's basically a miracle in itself, considering how much my ankle hurts."

"How did you break your ankle? I don't think I've been enlightened with that particular story yet," Matsukawa asks because it's true, he doesn't know how Hanamaki ended up in the ER in the first place.

A wry smile makes its way onto Hanamaki's face. "Oh, you're gonna love this one."

Matsukawa quirks his eyebrow.

"You see, I was out grocery shopping like any other responsible adult would do. So I get my groceries, load them in my car, and I'm about to put the shopping cart away. Except, I get this great idea, and it's like, 'Hey, why not ride the shopping cart down to put it away, instead of pushing it like any other responsible adult?' So that's what I did, except, of course, it didn't work out the way I had planned. The cart tips over, I fall out, and my foot gets caught under it. Cue the 'Oh, shit' moment when I realize I can't stand. I call my friend, explain the entire situation to him, and ask him to pick me up," Hanamaki explains.

For a moment, Matsukawa doesn't say anything. He just stares. Then, he starts laughing.

"Oh my god, I can't believe you!" he wheezes to Hanamaki.

"Hey, I don't think ending up in the ER because you were trying to see how far back you could tip your chair is a much more dignified way to get injured."

"Yeah, but I can't imagine having to explain to a friend that I broke my ankle riding a shopping cart and that I needed them to take me to the hospital," Matsukawa says. And it's true, he can't imagine having to call Iwaizumi to explain something like that, he's just glad that Iwaizumi was there when he injured himself.

"Yeah, yeah," Hanamaki waves his uninjured hand dismissively.

There's a break in their banter, and Matsukawa finds himself thinking once again how glad he is that both of them had happened to have ended up in the ER today.

The conversation starts up again, and Matsukawa finds himself veering away from the topic of their current predicament to various other topics.

He tells Hanamaki about work, how his coworkers had once tried to prank him and Iwaizumi but it had backfired tremendously when they ended up being on the receiving end of Iwaizumi's wrath afterward.

Hanamaki tells him about the time he invited his friend Oikawa over for dinner and immediately regretted it when Oikawa started flirting not only with his sister but also his mother.

In return, Matsukawa talks about the time a kouhai at work had bet another one that he couldn't do a backflip off the wall and they ended up breaking a table and two chairs and had to scrub their own blood off the ground.

And they go back and forth like this for a while, trading stories to tell and laughing at each other until Matsukawa finds himself asking, "By the way, how long have we been here?" Because, honestly, he's lost track of time.

Hanamaki glances at a clock on a nearby wall. "Well, I'm not entirely sure when we arrived here, but it must have been a couple of hours? 5, maybe 6?"

"Damn, what if I'd been dying? I swear the cuts on my face will heal themselves before the doctor even arrives. Did I tell you about the time I burned myself and waited 4 hours in the emergency room before just going home and treat it myself?"

Hanamaki snorts. "No, but it just goes to show how efficient these hospitals are. But if you were dying, they'd probably see you first, wouldn't they? They have to have some sort of priority system."

"Good to know that I have to be literally on the verge of death for the doctors to see me."

"Like I said, don't you just love the efficiency of hospitals?"

It's another hour before the doctors do come, and Matsukawa finds out that he does, indeed, need stitches, on several of his cuts. They tell him that he's lucky he didn't get a concussion falling through the glass, and he says that it's probably because the chair had already broken the pane before he fell through. As he's about to go and get his stitches, Matsukawa sees that Hanamaki's also being seen to as well, and are currently discussing his ankle.

Later, when Matsukawa's all cleared to leave with a face full of stitches, he sees Hanamaki in the lobby sitting in a wheelchair. His ankle's in a cast and his wrist's in a splint, but when he sees Matsukawa he breaks into a grin and waves his arm to gesture him to come closer.

When Matsukawa gets close enough to hear him speak, Hanamaki says, "Huh, I guess you weren't lying when you said that your face wouldn't disappoint. You look like Frankenstein, though, with those stitches on your face."

"Good to know. But hey, now I can go scare children with it. Tell them my face split open because I didn't eat my vegetables," Matsukawa jokes.

"I'm glad that you're apparently in a habit of scaring children." Hanamaki's eyebrow arches up.

"I can't help it, I have nightmares from that time I babysat my little cousin."

They both laugh at that, earning them a few looks from some passerby, reminding them that while they may not be in the emergency room anymore, it is still a hospital.

"Hospitals really aren't ideal places to chat, huh," Matsukawa muses.

"Well, are we still on for coffee? I know for a fact that we probably won't get weird looks from laughing out loud in a coffee shop," Hanamaki says.

Matsukawa casts a dubious glance at Hanamaki's ankle and wrist. "How are you planning to meet me when you can't use crutches or wheel yourself around?"

Hanamaki grins, and he raises the arm with the injured wrist. "Hey, don't worry, my wrist is only sprained, so I'll be able to use crutches in a week's time."

Matsukawa smiles back. "Alright then, if you say so."

They exchange numbers, promising to meet up when Hanamaki's wrist is healed. After Matsukawa gets home, he mostly continues life as he had before, only needing to be careful of his stitches. Throughout the week, he has sporadic text conversations with Hanamaki, and eventually set a date and time for the meetup.

When they finally do meet up two weeks later in a coffee shop, Hanamaki arrives on crutches. He proudly demonstrates to Matsukawa how strong his previously injured wrist is by way of an arm wrestling match. Matsukawa swears to introduce him to Iwaizumi so they can see who's actually stronger.

It turns out, they still get weird looks from other people in the coffee shop, although for a different reason. Matsukawa still hasn't gotten his stitches taken out, and Hanamaki's still on crutches, and they both agree that they probably make quite the pair to outsiders.

It also turns out, after introducing each other to their respective friends, nobody had been surprised to learn that the two of them had met in the emergency room.

* * *

 **A/N:** Posted this on ao3 a while ago, but forgot to here. I'm basically posting the stories all at once right now.


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